As a third-generation American with ancestors from Norway, Sweden, Germany, Austria, and Wales, reading parish records, books, and other genealogical data written in these languages is extremely difficult. Even after taking four years of college German and navigating through many of the records available in Germany and Austria, I still use my German dictionary extensively.

Beginning research in the other languages seems a formidable task without some knowledge of the basic genealogical words in these languages. In one of my genealogy classes at Brigham Young University, I decided to work on my Norwegian line, starting where my aunt and uncle had been stumped for years. They knew some basic information—some first names, the names of children, and a farm name in Norway—but they did not know my great-grandfather’s Norwegian last name. Because of patronymic naming conventions, when he arrived at the port of entry his last name was changed to Nelson.

While researching at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, I asked the Norway consultant for some assistance to know where to begin. After finding a ship list using my great-grandfather’s wife’s first name and matching it with the names of her husband and children, we were able to find the original last name, Iverson. With that information, the consultant led me to a book that was written in Norwegian. I looked at the book and felt that I had reached the end of my searching because of the language barrier. The consultant then gave me a valuable tool, a Norwegian genealogical word list. With that tool and the information in the book, I was able to connect my great-grandfather to generations of ancestors. Using the word list, I was able to further research my ancestors from 1875 back to 1560. What a genealogical find! This basic tool, a genealogical word list, helped me scale the language barrier and uncover much information about my ancestors.

In order to help others scale the language barrier, below is a list of sites on the Internet that contain language word lists, dictionaries, and translation tools. I have also listed a few sites that have information about language training tools and cultural hints about the languages. Some of the sites have all of their information available on the Internet while others sell their information in CD-ROM format.

Word Lists
SourceGuide™, a CD-ROM by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has the Norwegian word list that helped me in my research. SourceGuide also contains German and Danish word lists. These word lists give great information including the following:

1. The changes in language over the years as well as basic hints for reading the language.
2. Variant forms of words (including conjugations).
3. Common spelling variations.
4. Keywords to help you find specific records that are listed from English to the other language.
5. General words lists that are common in most genealogical sources listed from the other language into English.
6. Additional sources such as dictionaries.

Dictionaries
On the Internet, there are numerous sites that have dictionaries in various languages. Some sites have tables of languages that link to lists of dictionaries available online. Robert Beard, Director of Russian and Linguistics Programs at Bucknell University, has one of the most comprehensive lists of dictionaries available online. His list links to over 800 dictionaries in 160 languages. He has his site set up so you can choose the language for which you would like to find sources, or you can go to a categories page that lists different categories of dictionaries (like Genealogy). I e-mailed Mr. Beard and suggested that he add genealogy to his list of categories and within two days, he had it listed with five sources! I am sure he will be adding more in the future.

Other dictionary sites are listed below:

A Web of Online Dictionaries
This site links to over 800 dictionaries in 160 different languages. “This Web site indexes online dictionaries, thesauri, and the like containing words and phrases. Preference in selection has been given to free online dictionaries of high quality. However, downloadable and subscription materials are listed if exceptionally rare and/or unusually well-executed. A few inceptive word lists of languages otherwise not represented have also been included, as encouragement to continued development.”

Rivendel International Communications
This site contains hundreds of online dictionaries and translators. There are also links to online language courses, language chat sites, and many other language learning tools.

Travlang’s Translating Dictionaries
Travlang offers many free online translating dictionaries. These dictionaries translate to and from English, German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, Frisian, Afrikaans, Hungarian, Czech, Esperanto, and Latin.

XA International
A collection of links to numerous language online dictionaries and glossaries, including Far East languages, Chinese, Estonian, French, Japanese, Russina, Swahili, Urdu, and Vietnamese. You will also find glossaries for general computer and Internet terms.

Language Software from Trantor
Trantor sells dictionaries of many specialties and also offers multimedia software for learning English, Japanese, Chinese, French, Swedish, German, Finnish, and Polish.

Language Quest Software
Language Quest offers dictionary tools such as Word Ace, a comprehensive translation dictionary and verb conjugation reference for French, Spanish, German, Italian, Russian, Danish, Portuguese, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, and Dutch. You can also order the Euro Dictionary on CD-ROM.

Translation Tools
There are tools available, either online or through CD-ROM-based products, that will translate from one language into another. Some translation tools are listed below:

AltaVista Translations
AltaVista Translations will translate text that you type in or will translate entire Web pages if you supply the URL for the site. AltaVista Translations currently supports English to French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish; and French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese to English.

Language Quest Software
Language Quest supplies many different translation programs. Some focus on the major European languages while others deal with less common languages, such as Esperanto and Swahili. Arabic, Brazilian, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Rumanian, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese

CD-ROM-based Translation Tools

• Easy Translator (Quick and easy translations in Spanish, French and German to and from English)
  
• Globalink 4 in 1 (Write e-mail in English, send it off in Spanish, French, German, or Italian. Or translate it into English from these four languages.)
  
• Globalink Power Translator (Available in German/English, French/English, Spanish/English)
  
• Language Assistant (Available in German/English, French/English, Spanish/English, Italian/English)
  
• Language Assistant—Euro Pack (English to French, German, and Italian and from French, German, and Italian to English)
  
• Language Assistant—Latin Pack (English to Spanish and Portuguese and Spanish and Portuguese to English)
  
• Typhoon MT (Japanese to English)
  
• Tsunami MT (English to Japanese)
  
• Typhoon—Tsunami Combination (Japanese to English and English to Japanese)
  
• Universal Translator (33 different languages supported type in Japanese and translate into German without going through English dictionaries)

Web Translators

New World Graphics
New World Graphics sells translation tools for Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Finnish, German, Greek, French, Farsi, Danish, Czech, Hungarian, Indonesian, Japanese, Latin, Polish, Romanian, Slovak, Swahili, Tagalog, Turkish, Vietnamese, Ukrainian, Thai, Swedish, Russian, Portuguese, Norwegian, Korean, Italian. They also sell language training tools for French, Spanish, German, English, Italian, Russian, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Arabic, Irish, or Latin.

Vox Populi, llc.
Here, you can order Spanish interpreters and translators, or software if you are interested in learning Spanish.

Word Magic Software
Word Magic Software provides comprehensive Spanish/English translation tools, including an English-Spanish Translator, Bilingual Professional and Technical Dictionaries, a Verb Conjugator, a Mirror-Thesaurus, an Expression Builder, and Games. You can download a free trial version of the software at their Web site.

TMH’s Multilingual Text-To-Speech Service
Type in a word and hear it spoken in Svenska, American English, French, or German.

Aim High, Inc. Translator
Aim High, Inc. specializes in pocket-sized language translators that support Arabic, Bulgarian, Czech, Chinese, French, Greek, German, Hebrew, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, and Vietnamese.

Other Language-based Sites

Berlitz
At the Berlitz Web site, you will find crash course language tutorial tools, and tools that teach the following languages, including lists of frequently used phrases: English, Danish, German, Spanish, French, Arabic, Italian, Dutch, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Swedish, and Finnish. Berlitz also has other books and cassette tape products available for many other languages.

Rivendel International Communications
Has numerous links (good and bad) to sites that offer free online language courses in various languages and also lists sites with virtual language schools.

Syracuse Language
Sells French, Italian, German, English, Spanish, and other language training tools.

Talkfast
Sells numerous language training tools in Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and other languages.

The Rosetta Stone Language Library
The Rosetta Stone Language Library offers computer aided language learning software for many languages, including Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Latin, and Russian.

Tools-of-the-Trade
Tools-of-the-Trade features translation dictionary add-ons in French, German, or Spanish for any DOS, Windows, or Macintosh word processor. The add-ons include a bilingual dictionary, grammar reference, verb tables (except German), and example sentences.

Yahoo!

Krisene Watson has a B.A. in family and community history and a M.S. in library and information science from Brigham Young University. She has worked in the computer industry for nine years and enjoys integrating her education with her work as a Web developer for Ancestry.com.